Flesh and Soul can't be satisfied...
The bells rang loudly.
An ominous call. A call of reckoning.
The sound carried through every square inch of stone the same way rot pulsed through putrid flesh.
A quiet, patient inescapablility. It slipped into Nero's sleep and pried it apart without grace and mercy. By the time his eyes opened, he already knew what the tolling bells meant.
Midnight.
For a moment, he didn't move, his body cold and fixed to the bed.
The room was dark, the thin slit in the only window in the room offering nothing but a deeper shade of blackness beyond it. The air felt heavier than usual, as though something unseen had settled over the Red House while the rest of the world slept.
Or perhaps this unseen force was not just over the Red House.
Outside the window, in the pitch darkness, the rest of Liedenstorm, and perhaps even the entire Thorne Empire, even in the death of night, something stirred.
